The Expression Profile of Connexin-30 and Connexin-32 in the Somatosensory and Visual Cortex of Rats during Early Postnatal Ontogeny

Abstract

Many studies are focused on the mechanisms of CNS formation, especially on the molecular bases of CNS functioning at different stages of maturation. It is known that functional maturation of different parts of the neocortex occurs at different time points of postnatal ontogeny and gap junctions play an important role in this process. So far, it was not clear whether the expression of major proteins that form gap junctions, connexins, is uniform in the neocortex during its maturation. We compared the dynamics of mRNA level of connexin-30 (Cx30, gjb6) and connexin-32 (Cx32, gjb1) in the somatosensory and visual parts of the neocortex during period of early postnatal ontogeny. We measured the mRNA level of mentioned connexins using quantitative real-time PCR after reverse transcription in the samples of neocortex collected at postnatal days 5, 8, 10, 13, and 20. We found that the level of Cx30 mRNA progressively increased in the somatosensory neocortex from the 5th to 20th day of postnatal ontogeny. In contrast, the level of Cx30 mRNA in the visual cortex began to increase only after the 10th day of postnatal development. Analysis of Cx32 expression showed that its expression started to increase only after 10th day in the somatosensory cortex and after 13th day in the visual cortex. Taken together, our data suggest that the expression of Cx30 and Cx32 is more intense in the somatosensory than in the visual neocortex at early stages of ontogeny which may reflect different time course of maturation of these neocortical areas.